No, not just a US thing, there a plenty of countries that charge large amounts for these kinds of qualifications. New Zealand to name one.

And what about those who view a life long debt and slavery as insufficient to make up for persistance on a piece of paper?

You are right in that degrees are not an insurmountable challenge to achieve, but for an increasingly competitive marketplace, you are required to accrue greater and greater levels of debt just to keep up, let alone stand out. Landed a great paying and stimulating job, right out of university? Lucky you. Many people are not so fortunate, and others still view that risk as too great, especially when its not amazingly difficult to learn the trade ones self.

I use passwordsafe for myself and in my office. its really pretty great. single master key password entry. I find the biggest problem with 'password safes' in general is that if they are broken, not only do they have all your passwords, they will know exactly what each password is for, even if they didn't know you had an account at XYZ bank or something else that can be exploited

the point is, however, that its probable that a certain product or commodity will be desirable by somebody, or even a group of somebodies, at some point in time, based on past interactions in the marketplace.

actually no, leave wine installed, and set the mmap_min_addr value higher.

[citation needed]

yes

no, its fine! the job posting clearly states: Experienced TAs earn more. its all there in black and white.

thanks to reading about this C&D letter, ive remembered that ive been meaning to order an arduino from sparkfun for some time. consider that done!